Only around half of medications prescribed are considered to be effective, while adverse drug reactions (ADRs) have a significant impact on the NHS.⁷

Hospital admissions due to avoidable ADRs have been estimated to cost the NHS £530 million each year. However, it is becoming increasingly possible to predict ADRs and a lack of drug efficacy by assessing genetic variations in a patient.¹

Pharmacogenomics can help identify the right drugs for patients and predict whether a patient is likely to have a side-effect or adverse event because of their medication. Areas of interest include receptor binding sites, drug uptake, drug metabolism, and how a gene mutation may affect coding for making functional proteins.^7,8

Personalised or precision medicine is about specifically tailoring treatment to the individual’s circumstances. Genomics can be used with health data to improve the prediction, diagnosis, prevention and treatment of disease. There are also opportunities to reduce polypharmacy with a more targeted therapeutic approach.^1,7

Ultimately, the goal of pharmacogenomics is that a blood test taken once in a patient’s lifetime means that the patient thereafter is only ever prescribed the right medicine at the right dose for them.¹